Nancy Pelosi defends doctored photos

San Francisco Democrat and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s proudest accomplishment in the November election was a new caucus where women, gays, Asians, Latinos and African Americans outnumber white males. It is the first time in history that white men have been outnumbered in any Congressional caucus. Pelosi often heralds her party’s diversity efforts by citing San Francisco and saying “the strength is in the mix.”

But at her press conference Friday, she found herself Friday defending a doctored photo of diversity. The photograph of women Democrats, taken Thursday with the swearing in of new Congress and posted on her Flickr website, showed four extra House Democratic women who were not in the original photo.

They had arrived late. Their images were inserted into the photograh.

“It was an accurate historical record of who the Democratic women of Congress are,” Pelosi said. “It also is an accurate record that it was freezing cold and our members had been waiting a long time for everyone to arrive and … had to get back into the building to greet constituents, family members, to get ready to go to the floor. It wasn’t like they had the rest of the day to stand there.”

Pelosi praised the diversity of the caucus, saying “we were pretty excited about it.”

“We got a lot of response back from the country, and one I loved was when they said, ‘Can the women in Congress hear the people cheering across the country?’”

The New York Times story Friday about the taking of the photograph makes light of the issue, saying the Democratic women openly stated their plans to Photoshop the late arrivals after urging the photographer to wait around to snap them.

The new House has 81 women, 61 of them Democrats, and the Senate has 20 women, including California’s Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, elected in the “Year of the Woman” in 1992.